Fair Is the Rose (3 page)

"Name's Mr. Henry Glassie, ma'am."

She looked up to find the salesman smiling at her again. He was a very pleasant-looking
man,
one whom she could believe provided good companionship on a long, dusty ride across a prairie such as this. But she didn't want companionship. She preferred silence. She could hide in silence.
At least from everyone except herself.

She stared at the man through the anonymity of her veil. Bitterly she wondered if the kindness would flee from his eyes if she told him who she was. That her face was on wanted posters from Maine to Missouri. That the gloves she wore to hide her lack of a wedding ring also hid the scar on her palm that was sketched onto every one of those posters. She'd seen the last poster in Chicago. That had been three years back, and Wyoming Territory seemed far enough
west
to be safe, but every day she worried that it might not be. She'd been held captive in a nightmare in New York. Now she was running from that nightmare and from her own face. And from one violent man who would see her dead before she could utter the truth about a crime she didn't commit.

"Madam, if I may be so honored to address you as . . . ?" The man raised his eyebrows as if imploring her for her name. She could see he was determined to get conversation from her.

"I
am Mrs. Smith," she answered in a low, polite voice.

His smile widened.
"A lovely name,
Smith.
So proudly democratic.
So easy to remember."

She almost smiled. He'd all but said her name was common—which it was. That was why she had chosen it. Yet Mr. Glassie made her feel complimented. He possessed the tools of a brilliant salesman: a silver tongue and a smooth presentation, and his comportment, his fashionable verdigris suit, and the large pearl stuck in his black four-in-hand tie, all proclaimed he was very successful at what he did.

But poor widows didn't buy much furniture, and conversation quickly trickled away, much to her relief. She was left once again to look out the window at the ironing board-flat prairie. Every now and again she removed her handkerchief, reached beneath her dark veil, and dabbed the perspiration that beaded along her brow. The sun burned overhead, and dust blew in the open windows, coating her gown with a gritty blond powder. They had just started out. Noble was a long day's ride. She was anxious to get there.

She'd heard a lot about the town of Noble the last three years. All her hopes now rested there. She was sick of running and she'd heard Noble was a good place to hide.
A lot of gambling, a lot of women, and nobody asking questions.
Not even a sheriff. They hadn't had one in years. People talked about Noble the way they talked about South Pass and Miners Delight; the town had sprung from nowhere with the rumor of gold and had faded just as quickly. But Noble's hedonistic ways lingered on and now it served cowhands and men heading north to Fort Washakie from the Union Pacific. She thought she'd be happy there for a while, working in a kitchen, dealing faro, even selling dances if she had to, in a small, nowhere town with
no
lawman to point fingers. It wasn't her first choice to sell dances for a living; the men were usually rough and sometimes they smelled. But she'd do it if there was no other work; her first thoughts were always on survival. And there were so many worse ways to make money.
Especially for a woman.

Christal's eyes clouded as if she weren't seeing the scenery any longer.
Vice.
She hated thinking about the word, but it followed her like a shadow that persisted even when the sun had gone down. Way back in the olden days of a life she hardly remembered anymore, a word like
vice
never would have entered her vocabulary.

Words like
vice
weren't in her family's dictionaries. In her world, vice was kept permanently untranslated and unexplained. For a young, well-bred Knickerbocker girl from Manhattan it was meant to be as meaningless a word as something written in shantytown Irish Gaelic—a language most definitely not taught at Miss Bailey's Conservatoire for Young Ladies, the exclusive girls' school on Fifth Avenue where once her destiny had led her.

But destiny had somehow come off its tracks, and now, instead, she was in Wyoming, living a life she never imagined, understanding vice all too well because she'd spent three painful years trying to avoid its clutches.

"Oughta be riding shotgun too, Pa. Them Sioux— never know when they gonna act up." The boy's voice brought her out of her dark thoughts. He looked at his pa, who was trying to sleep beneath his hat.

"You're a genelman now, Pete. We got money. We don't ride shotgun no more. Soon as we get to St. Louie, we gonna buy us some clothes and be genelmen once and fer all."

"We ain't got no escort, just the driver and the shotgun. What if we get stopped? This is Sioux territory. And
them
Cheyennes, everybody knows they're all riled up—"

"Noble's spittin' distance from here.
They don't need you, Pete. That's what we paid 'em fer. And what you gonna do when we get on that there locomotive in St. Louie? Try and push it fer 'em?"

"Aw, Pa," Pete groaned. He gave an
embarrassed
glance in Christal's direction; then, as if he was glad for her veil, he turned to the window, appearing to scout for braves.

Indians.
Her scalp tingled every time anyone even said the word. In the territory she'd crossed she'd heard bloodcurdling stories about the Kootenai, Flathead, Shoshone,
Blackfoot
. They were horrible stories, stories that gave her nightmares. But nightmares weren't so bad when one was living a nightmare. She wasn't afraid of Indians.

Then the coach stopped.

At first no one knew what had happened. There was just a silence, a stagnant pause that held nothing but the flavor of anxiety. A pair of boots thudded against the top of the stage, but Christal realized that was only the man who rode shotgun shifting position.

"Why have we stopped?" Mr. Glassie asked, clutching his bureau and looking around as if someone inside the coach would know the answer.

"We ain't s'pose to stop at Dry Fork." The grizzled man in the blue vest frowned,
then
poked his head out the window. He opened his mouth to shout at the driver, but for some reason the words collapsed in his throat. When he drew back inside the coach, the muzzle of a rifle was pointed directly at his nose.

Christal gripped her purse until her knuckles were white. Suddenly all those stories of Indians and outlaws came back to her with an immediacy that left her stunned. Her mouth went dry. Through the mist of her veil she saw the preacher slam his Bible shut, shock, not inebriation, slackening his features. Pete looked as if he were foolishly about to take on whoever held his father at gunpoint. Outside, she heard the horses stamp, nervous with strangers in their midst. A second later the sound of a scuffle battered the top of the coach. There was a sudden silence; then a rifle thudded to the ground.

A hand, a very un-Indian grimy white hand, reached inside the coach and unlatched the door. Christal drew back in fear. A scuffed boot came up to rest on the threshold, and its owner leaned on his knee.
"Howdy, folks."
The man smiled, showing a mouthful of bad teeth. He was unshaven and dirty, with mean dull eyes that quickly surveyed the passengers. When he saw his threat registered, he laughed.

"Is this a holdup?" Mr. Glassie gasped, holding his miniature bureau like a shield.

From behind the black veil Christal watched the outlaw, her heart hammering in her chest as if it would break free of her corset.

"Cain!" the outlaw shouted, lowering the rifle. "They want to know if'n this is a holdup!" He laughed again and pulled his bandanna over his face to mock them.

"See here," Mr. Glassie blustered, but before he could get out the words the outlaw was pulled aside and another took his place.

Christal had never seen such a man before. As an outlaw, he looked much like the other one, taller perhaps and more broadly built, but he was unshaven, with several days' growth of dark beard on his chin. His shirt was dusty and worn, a faded scarlet bandanna was tied around his neck, available to cover his face should the need arise. But he was different, memorable,
more
dangerous than the other man. His eyes made her heart stop. She had never seen such steely
eyes,
eyes that made it feel like January in July.

"Men outside," he grunted. Those eyes turned to Christal, pinning her to her seat. She knew he couldn't see her face beneath the veil, but that was small comfort as she squirmed beneath the chilling gaze.

To her relief he turned away to direct the male passengers. Her shoulders slumped after the assault of that stare, and she expelled the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding.

"Is this a holdup?" Mr. Glassie persisted, unwilling to remove himself from the coach until the situation was clearer. "As you men can see, we've a lady on board. We can't just trot off this coach and leave her behind without someone—"

"I said men outside." The outlaw with the cold gray eyes shot Mr. Glassie a glance of ice. The salesman didn't need more than that to convince him to relinquish his bureau and get out of the stage.

One by one, they filed out. Pete kept a defiant look on his face, as if to say "I ain't afraid of you." His father looked anxious, as if he'd come so far only to have all his dreams dashed in a robbery. From the window Christal looked at the preacher. His hands were shaking as he held them over his head. Her own hands were slick with cold sweat as she held on to the window.

She looked in the distance, hopelessly seeking help. The bridge at Dry Fork was obviously where these outlaws had been hiding as their target had rolled toward them. Christal spied their horses tied beneath the bridge. She counted five.

". . . am a representative of the Paterson Furniture Company of Paterson, New Jersey, and my company shall hear about this outrageous treatment, my good fellows!" Mr. Glassie announced as the first outlaw searched him for weapons.
The second, the one with the steely eyes, patted down the old man's blue vest while Pete glared.

"I'm a poor man, a poor man, mister," Pete's father chanted while being searched. "Ain't
no
need in stealing from me 'cause I'm a poor man."

"No weapons, Cain," the first outlaw called out.

Cain, the man with the steely eyes, nodded. He lifted up Pete's coat. Finding a six-shooter stuck in the waistband of the boy's jeans, he took it and pushed the boy aside.

"Listen up." Cain shot a couple of times into the air. Everyone gave him full attention, including the driver and the man who rode shotgun, who were now on the ground. "You men'll be walking the rest of the way. Just follow behind the stage." Cain looked to the two riders who were bringing the horses up from the Dry Fork
bridge
. "The boys
'll
see you get there."